“I am definitely not the only shopholder in Midnight who feels that way.”
“I understand,” he said again. “Are you okay?”
“Of course,” she said with a smile in her voice. “We’ll talk later, when you’re at liberty.” And she hung up.
“You’re right,” Manfred told Olivia. “They’re not here to shop. But they’re not looking for you. They’re looking for Barry.”
He stood at his window, assessing the situation. There was a sign across the way on the front door of the chapel.
“Can you read that sign, Olivia?”
She joined him. “It says, ‘CLOSED today and maybe TOMORROW.’ With ‘closed’ and ‘tomorrow’ in caps.”
There was now another car at Home Cookin. But the restaurant wouldn’t be open for a while. A woman—at this distance he could only tell she was tall and thin and pale—crossed Witch Light Road after turning away from Home Cookin. She hesitated in front of Joe and Chuy’s shop, and then walked to Gas N Go. He saw her push open the glass door, and he could almost hear the electronic buzz.
“They’re everywhere,” Olivia said.
“Olivia, I don’t know who these people are or what they’re doing here. Barry is the guy who probably knows all about it, and I’m pretty sure it’s because of his senile grandfather that he’s in a fix. I don’t think this is connected to you.”
“Tell me.” She seemed to relax a little.
“In a nutshell, Barry Horowitz isn’t his real name. It’s Barry Bellboy, which is pretty strange, and I have to think that isn’t the name he was born with. Yesterday in the evening, Grandpa got lost, told the deputy who found him what his grandson’s name was, the deputy broadcast that name to find somewhere to return Grandpa, and apparently whoever Barry is so scared of heard it. They’re in Fiji’s shop now. You believed these people were looking for you?”
“Yes, I did believe that,” she said. “They’ll be here any minute. No matter who they’re looking for, they’ll go to every place in Midnight.”
“Are you gonna let them see you?”
“Hell, no! I’m going to hide in your kitchen and listen to what they say to you.”
“Thanks,” he said bitterly. “Jump in and save my life, okay?”
“They’re not going to kill you. At least, probably not. But if they get aggressive, I’ll take action.”
Manfred thought it was ominous she didn’t say what that action might be. Maybe Olivia would run out the back door.
He was almost relieved when he saw her put a gun ready on the table. He didn’t know anything about guns, and he didn’t like them. It was worse than having a snake on the table. But at least now he knew she was not planning to leave him defenseless.
She sat, hands folded, waiting.
She was better at it than Manfred.
He took a cold drink to his workstation and began to answer personal e-mails. He never had very many. But today, he heard from Rain, and it was a significant message. She and Gary had gotten married. “Since we couldn’t see the situation with his kids changing and we weren’t getting any younger, we just eloped!” she wrote. Manfred sighed heavily. Rain Redding. He’d have to get used to it. And he’d have to have a conversation with Fiji about an appropriate wedding gift. He tried composing a reply, but after two abortive attempts, he decided he would call later. An unspecified “later.” When all this is over, he thought.
Finally, he started real work. He turned on the psychic hotline phone, as he thought of it, and started taking calls. In between calls, he answered the paying e-mails. And if he caught up with those, there was the Amazing Bernardo website, and messages to answer there. The routine took over. He almost forgot about the woman with the gun behind him, and the strange people going around searching Midnight, and he worked. After all, the bill from Magdalena would be high, and his car wasn’t any younger.
At least he wouldn’t have to fly home for his mother’s wedding.
A knock at the door broke his concentration. He sent the e-mail he was working on (Your boyfriend gives off a very violent vibration, and you should take care of your own safety first) before he went to the door.
And then looked down.
The man was less than five feet tall and looked to Manfred’s uneducated eyes like an Indian. Manfred could not have specified what kind of Indian or his country of origin, but he was built broadly and he was very dark skinned. The whites of his eyes weren’t actually white, but faintly yellow.
“Hello,” Manfred said, hoping Olivia was primed to take action. “Can I help you?”
“Your name, sir?”
The Indian’s voice was not the deep rumble Manfred had expected. It was a light tenor. Manfred felt ridiculously self-conscious and couldn’t decide what a totally innocent response would be to what was actually a kind of strange question.
“You’re the one who knocked,” he said. “I’m working here, and I need to get back to it.” He began closing the door, but there was a small boot in the way.
“Excuse me,” said the Indian. “Perhaps I wasn’t polite or clear. I am looking for someone, and I need to ask you a few questions.”
“Maybe I wasn’t clear,” Manfred retorted. “I am working, and I am not obliged to answer your questions.” He tried to close the door again. The boot didn’t move.
“Is there anyone else in your house?” the Indian asked.
“No, there is no one else in my house.”
“May I look and see?”
“No.” Manfred was definite about that.
“Has there been a strange man in town lately? Tall, in his late twenties, perhaps using the last name Bell or Bellboy?”
“If there is, I haven’t met him, but mostly I’m stuck here working, which I need to do now.” Manfred deftly kicked the boot out of the way with his own and slammed the door, locking it as quickly as he could.
Then he walked back to his desk and threw himself into the chair to make it creak and roll noisily over the hardwood floor. And he waited. After an extremely long thirty seconds, the Indian moved away. Manfred exhaled slowly and deliberately.
“You heard?” he said.
“Yeah. I think he’s a daytime guy, working for a vampire.”
Manfred turned around. Olivia looked a lot more like the woman he knew than she had when he’d returned home that day. Some terrible emotion had leaked out of her to be replaced by practicality. “Why do you think that?” he asked.
“Was he wearing something around his neck?”
“Yeah,” Manfred said. “A bandanna. Like he was part of an Old West pageant.”
“Okay, then. He’s a fangbanger.”
“I don’t know much about the vampire thing,” Manfred said. “I’ve only been to Louisiana once, and that was in the daytime.”
“They do keep a low profile almost everywhere else,” Olivia said. “Especially since the were-animal disaster. I know there’s an enclave in Dallas, though. I think these people searching Midnight were sent by that enclave. They all arrived about the same time, they’re all strangers, they’re all asking questions, I assume. They’re going in and out of all the businesses in town. They’re looking for Barry, so they’ve got a grudge against him for some reason, and he knows about it. Since they’re after him, not me, I’m outta here. I have something to do in Dallas.” And she was gone.
Manfred hardly noticed. Before he could think the better of it, he called Barry’s cell.
“Hello.” Barry’s voice was low and cautious.
“Someone was here.”
Barry said, still very quietly, “I saw them out the window. If they find me, I’m dead.”
“Are you . . . well hidden? A short guy with a bandanna around his neck was here. He was very persistent.”
“His name is Alejandro,” Barry said. “Even for my grandfather, I shouldn’t have set foot in Te
xas again.”
Manfred was powerfully curious to learn the whole story, but this was not the time to ask to hear it. “We won’t give you up,” he said, aware that his own voice had hushed to match Barry’s.
“You won’t have a choice,” Barry whispered. “They’ll find me and take me to Dallas. I won’t get away with it this time. Better keep back.” And he hung up.
Manfred had an idea. There was a huge downside, but it might work, and he owed it to Barry, or Rick, or whatever the hell the man’s name was, to try something. Barry had done him a good turn. True, he’d gotten paid. But he’d done it willingly.
Manfred spent some time on the phone with Magdalena Powell. Then he warned the other residents of Midnight. When a news van rolled up, they were as ready as they were ever going to be. As he’d hoped, Magdalena was eager to take the opportunity to be on television. This would be a tiny press conference, maybe the smallest in Texas history: with a reporter from the Davy paper, a reporter from the closest television affiliate, and the regional stringer for a Dallas paper. Manfred elected to hold it in front of the Inquiring Mind, with Fiji’s permission. He reasoned that Fiji could use the publicity a lot more than he could. Besides, her lovingly created garden, with flowers blooming everywhere, was a much nicer backdrop than his barren little cottage.
Mr. Snuggly obliged by sitting on the porch and looking picturesque. One of the reporters almost stepped on him and then leaped to one side, looking wildly around to find the source of the tiny voice that said something very pointed to him.
Manfred, nervous and regretting his impulse already, let his gaze pan over the streets of Midnight. The strangers were popping out of the Midnight buildings, and they started to drift down to Fiji’s. That was exactly what he’d wanted.
Magdalena looked at her watch, looked at the reporters, and said, “Time to get started.”
Manfred would rather have waited another two or three minutes, but he didn’t want to rouse any suspicion in Alejandro, who was standing like a very unfortunate statue by one of Fiji’s rosebushes.
“I wanted to announce today,” Manfred said clearly, “that I am innocent of the charges leveled against me by Lewis Goldthorpe. These charges relate to the disappearance of some jewelry of his mother’s. Also, I understand that Lewis Goldthorpe has been hinting to his media connections that I am guilty of some kind of wrongdoing in the death of his mother, my friend Rachel Goldthorpe. The very idea of such a thing is repugnant to me, and I suggest that if Lewis keeps spreading this kind of terrible rumor, I will see him in court with my lawyer, Magdalena Orta Powell.” Manfred felt relieved at getting through this statement, especially “repugnant,” and he added, “Magdalena Powell can kick Lewis’s butt legally.”
There was some actual laughter, and Magdalena, who wanted to punch him, instead smiled in an arctic way. Manfred was relieved she didn’t shove him off Fiji’s porch.
“Magdalena,” called the man who’d almost stepped on Mr. Snuggly’s tail, “how are you gonna kick Jess Barnwell’s butt?”
“Barnwell’s a fine lawyer,” Magdalena said seriously. “But he’s got an unreliable client.”
“As opposed to a phone psychic?”
“Ouch,” said Manfred, smiling. “But I’ve heard much worse.” He thought, Barry, get out now! Now!
He didn’t know if Barry could pick up on Manfred’s particular thought pattern, but he did sense that Barry was on the move, and he saw a car pull out of the alley running behind the hotel. It turned left to drive west on Witch Light Road. That would take him to the nearest highway north, which would get him into Oklahoma in a few hours.
Manfred turned his attention back to the here and now. “I may be a phone psychic, among other things, but I don’t make false accusations against people to the police or the media,” he said.
“You’re saying Lewis Goldthorpe has slandered you?”
“I’m saying that he should remember that he lives in a glass house,” Manfred said, and he thought Magdalena was going to blow a fuse. “It may be in Bonnet Park, and I may live in Midnight.” He swept his hand around theatrically to indicate his surroundings. “He may be the son of a millionaire, and I may be the grandson of a great psychic.” (He owed his grandmother Xylda that, he figured.) “But when he makes statements that besmirch the memory of his mother, he has forfeited his right to my respect and consideration.”
That got their attention, and there was a lively back-and-forth between Manfred and “the media” until Magdalena shut it down with a graceful statement thanking them all for coming today. The little crowd dispersed, the fangbangers gathering to engage in a low-voiced conference, the reporters to straggle back to their vehicles and depart.
“That was a good idea,” Magdalena said. “I think. What made you so determined to do it?” He’d only been able to get her to agree to show up by telling her he’d do it without her. Instead of dropping him as a client, she’d figured being on television was not so bad.
“It was a diversion, plus I wanted to get up in Lewis’s face,” he said. “He’s tried to say I’m a thief. Well, maybe he’s a murderer. He needs to be worried about himself.”
“You baffle me,” she said, looking at her client with frustration all over her face. “And if you think I did this for free . . .”
“That never crossed my mind,” said Manfred honestly. “I expect your bill in the mail. Listen, as long as you’re here, would you like to have an early dinner at Home Cookin?”
The lawyer’s face was a picture of startled. She hesitated. “A regular gathering?” She was gauging the social texture of the meal. Manfred didn’t blame her.
“It’s almost always just us Midnight people,” he said. “But I’m giving Arthur a call.”
That decided her, as he had suspected it would. She looked at her watch. “I am through for the day,” she said. “All right. As long as you know we’re just . . . lawyer and client.”
Magdalena was attractive, but he’d rather date a barracuda. “Of course,” he said, hoping he sounded just a little regretful.
Fiji came out of her house, where she’d been secluded in the back during the press conference. He could tell she was feeling pretty today, though she always seemed pretty to him.
“Fiji, you coming with us?” he asked.
She smiled. “I guess so. I don’t feel like cooking and making my kitchen hot, you know?” Her smile brightened when Bobo emerged from the pawnshop. He crossed the road to walk with them. “Hola, Magdalena,” he called.
Manfred was not at all surprised to find that Bobo knew his lawyer.
“Hey, Feej, are you going to charge Manfred? Since he used your garden as a backdrop for his press thing?”
“Nah,” she said. “The shop sign was probably in the photos.”
Mr. Snuggly rubbed against Manfred’s denim-covered leg before vanishing into the backyard in his mysterious cat way. They passed the closed chapel with its sign, and none of them said anything, though Magdalena gave it a curious look. Manfred, who’d been texting, grinned. “Arthur’s showing up in a few minutes,” he said.
“Cool,” Bobo said. “I haven’t had a talk with him in months.”
“Okay,” Fiji said. “I kind of like him.” She sounded faintly surprised, as if she were not in the habit of liking law enforcement officers.
Fiji and Bobo walked ahead. While Manfred and Magdalena were out of hearing, he asked, “Just out of curiosity, can you find out the terms of Morton’s will?”
“It’s a matter of public record,” Magdalena said. “If you want to pay for my time, of course I can get a copy.”
“I do, and the sooner the better.”
“I’ll tell Phil tomorrow.”
When they were about to cross the Davy highway, they saw Chuy and Joe emerge from their shop doorway. They, too, were eating out tonight. Now that the strangers were gone, and so was
Rick Horowitz (né Barry Bellboy), everyone was happier except maybe Shorty Horowitz. Manfred was glad Barry was on his way to safety; he was glad no vampires would come to Midnight. Crisis averted.
And, he had to confess to himself, it was a relief to have the telepath gone from their midst, as much as he’d been curious about what Barry was “receiving” from his companions.
“By the way,” Magdalena said.
“What?”
“I only agreed to your little press conference because the Bonnet Park police had already called me to tell me they’d found the jewelry. You’d just been cleared. So it was safe for you to deny all the charges in public.”
Manfred stared at her, his mouth hanging open. “I should have wondered harder why you agreed to do it,” he said. “You know what? I’m just happy it’s over. I couldn’t have killed her, and I didn’t steal anything, and it’s all public knowledge.” He felt amazingly lighthearted.
Chicken and dumplings was on the menu that night, along with baked tilapia. These were new, so they were all more interested than usual in their food.
Manfred wasn’t the only one to notice that Arthur chose a chair by Magdalena, or perhaps Magdalena had arranged to have an empty seat available. She was a lawyer and used to strategizing. But after Arthur had ordered, his phone buzzed, and he stepped outside to take the call. Dillon was in the kitchen getting another pitcher of iced tea, and Madonna was cooking.
Manfred had been able to see the tension in the way his landlord was sitting. There was something Bobo wanted to say, and since he couldn’t get rid of Magdalena as well, he leaned forward with sudden resolution.
“I wonder where our missing citizens are,” Bobo said. Since they were all seated around the big round table that dominated the little restaurant, they could all hear him even though he didn’t raise his voice. He meant the Rev and Diederik.
“Just one more night,” Fiji said, even more obliquely.
Manfred wasn’t sure he really wanted to know what the Rev was up to. “I guess we’ll find out if we’re supposed to know,” he said, and grabbed a piece of corn bread from the basket in the middle of the table.